The isolation of aims and values which we have been considering leads to
opposition between them. Probably the most deep-seated antithesis which
has shown itself in educational history is that between education in
preparation for useful labor and education for a life of leisure. The
bare terms "useful labor" and "leisure" confirm the statement already
made that the segregation and conflict of values are not self-inclosed,
but reflect a division within social life. Were the two functions
of gaining a livelihood by work and enjoying in a cultivated way the
opportunities of leisure, distributed equally among the different
members of a community, it would not occur to any one that there was
any conflict of educational agencies and aims involved. It would be
self-evident that the question was how education could contribute most
effectively to both. And while it might be found that some materials of
instruction chiefly accomplished one result and other subject matter
the other, it would be evident that care must be taken to secure as
much overlapping as conditions permit; that is, the education which had
leisure more directly in view should indirectly reinforce as much as
possible the efficiency and the enjoyment of work, while that aiming at
the latter should produce habits of emotion and intellect which would
procure a worthy cultivation of leisure. These general considerations
are amply borne out by the historical development of educational
philosophy. The separation of liberal education from professional
and industrial education goes back to the time of the Greeks, and was
formulated expressly on the basis of a division of classes into those
who had to labor for a living and those who were relieved from this
necessity. The conception that liberal education, adapted to men in the
latter class, is intrinsically higher than the servile training given
to the latter class reflected the fact that one class was free and the
other servile in its social status. The latter class labored not only
for its own subsistence, but also for the means which enabled the
superior class to live without personally engaging in occupations
taking almost all the time and not of a nature to engage or reward
intelligence.
That a certain amount of labor must be engaged in goes without saying.
Human beings have to live and it requires work to supply the resources
of life. Even if we insist that the interests connected with getting
a living are only material and hence intrinsically lower than those
connected with enjoyment of time released from labor, and even if it
were admitted that there is something engrossing and insubordinate
in material interests which leads them to strive to usurp the place
belonging to the higher ideal interests, this would not--barring
the fact of socially divided classes--lead to neglect of the kind of
education which trains men for the useful pursuits. It would rather lead
to scrupulous care for them, so that men were trained to be efficient in
them and yet to keep them in their place; education would see to it
that we avoided the evil results which flow from their being allowed to
flourish in obscure purlieus of neglect. Only when a division of these
interests coincides with a division of an inferior and a superior social
class will preparation for useful work be looked down upon with contempt
as an unworthy thing: a fact which prepares one for the conclusion that
the rigid identification of work with material interests, and leisure
with ideal interests is itself a social product. The educational
formulations of the social situation made over two thousand years ago
have been so influential and give such a clear and logical recognition
of the implications of the division into laboring and leisure classes,
that they deserve especial note. According to them, man occupies the
highest place in the scheme of animate existence. In part, he shares
the constitution and functions of plants and animals--nutritive,
reproductive, motor or practical. The distinctively human function is
reason existing for the sake of beholding the spectacle of the universe.
Hence the truly human end is the fullest possible of this distinctive
human prerogative. The life of observation, meditation, cogitation, and
speculation pursued as an end in itself is the proper life of man. From
reason moreover proceeds the proper control of the lower elements
of human nature--the appetites and the active, motor, impulses. In
themselves greedy, insubordinate, lovers of excess, aiming only at their
own satiety, they observe moderation--the law of the mean--and serve
desirable ends as they are subjected to the rule of reason.
Such is the situation as an affair of theoretical psychology and as most
adequately stated by Aristotle. But this state of things is reflected
in the constitution of classes of men and hence in the organization of
society. Only in a comparatively small number is the function of reason
capable of operating as a law of life. In the mass of people, vegetative
and animal functions dominate. Their energy of intelligence is so feeble
and inconstant that it is constantly overpowered by bodily appetite and
passion. Such persons are not truly ends in themselves, for only reason
constitutes a final end. Like plants, animals and physical tools, they
are means, appliances, for the attaining of ends beyond themselves,
although unlike them they have enough intelligence to exercise a certain
discretion in the execution of the tasks committed to them. Thus by
nature, and not merely by social convention, there are those who are
slaves--that is, means for the ends of others. 1 The great body of
artisans are in one important respect worse off than even slaves.
Like the latter they are given up to the service of ends external to
themselves; but since they do not enjoy the intimate association with
the free superior class experienced by domestic slaves they remain on a
lower plane of excellence. Moreover, women are classed with slaves and
craftsmen as factors among the animate instrumentalities of production
and reproduction of the means for a free or rational life.
Individually and collectively there is a gulf between merely living and
living worthily. In order that one may live worthily he must first live,
and so with collective society. The time and energy spent upon mere
life, upon the gaining of subsistence, detracts from that available for
activities that have an inherent rational meaning; they also unfit for
the latter. Means are menial, the serviceable is servile. The true life
is possible only in the degree in which the physical necessities are had
without effort and without attention. Hence slaves, artisans, and
women are employed in furnishing the means of subsistence in order that
others, those adequately equipped with intelligence, may live the life
of leisurely concern with things intrinsically worth while.
To these two modes of occupation, with their distinction of servile and
free activities (or "arts") correspond two types of education: the base
or mechanical and the liberal or intellectual. Some persons are trained
by suitable practical exercises for capacity in doing things, for
ability to use the mechanical tools involved in turning out physical
commodities and rendering personal service. This training is a
mere matter of habituation and technical skill; it operates through
repetition and assiduity in application, not through awakening and
nurturing thought. Liberal education aims to train intelligence for its
proper office: to know. The less this knowledge has to do with practical
affairs, with making or producing, the more adequately it engages
intelligence. So consistently does Aristotle draw the line between
menial and liberal education that he puts what are now called the "fine"
arts, music, painting, sculpture, in the same class with menial arts
so far as their practice is concerned. They involve physical agencies,
assiduity of practice, and external results. In discussing, for example,
education in music he raises the question how far the young should
be practiced in the playing of instruments. His answer is that such
practice and proficiency may be tolerated as conduce to appreciation;
that is, to understanding and enjoyment of music when played by slaves
or professionals. When professional power is aimed at, music sinks from
the liberal to the professional level. One might then as well teach
cooking, says Aristotle. Even a liberal concern with the works of fine
art depends upon the existence of a hireling class of practitioners who
have subordinated the development of their own personality to attaining
skill in mechanical execution. The higher the activity the more purely
mental is it; the less does it have to do with physical things or
with the body. The more purely mental it is, the more independent or
self-sufficing is it.
These last words remind us that Aristotle again makes a distinction of
superior and inferior even within those living the life of reason. For
there is a distinction in ends and in free action, according as one's
life is merely accompanied by reason or as it makes reason its own
medium. That is to say, the free citizen who devotes himself to the
public life of his community, sharing in the management of its affairs
and winning personal honor and distinction, lives a life accompanied
by reason. But the thinker, the man who devotes himself to scientific
inquiry and philosophic speculation, works, so to speak, in reason, not
simply by *. Even the activity of the citizen in his civic relations,
in other words, retains some of the taint of practice, of external or
merely instrumental doing. This infection is shown by the fact that
civic activity and civic excellence need the help of others; one cannot
engage in public life all by himself. But all needs, all desires imply,
in the philosophy of Aristotle, a material factor; they involve lack,
privation; they are dependent upon something beyond themselves for
completion. A purely intellectual life, however, one carries on by
himself, in himself; such assistance as he may derive from others is
accidental, rather than intrinsic. In knowing, in the life of theory,
reason finds its own full manifestation; knowing for the sake of knowing
irrespective of any application is alone independent, or self-sufficing.
Hence only the education that makes for power to know as an end in
itself, without reference to the practice of even civic duties, is
truly liberal or free. 2. The Present Situation. If the Aristotelian
conception represented just Aristotle's personal view, it would be a
more or less interesting historical curiosity. It could be dismissed
as an illustration of the lack of sympathy or the amount of academic
pedantry which may coexist with extraordinary intellectual gifts.
But Aristotle simply described without confusion and without that
insincerity always attendant upon mental confusion, the life that was
before him. That the actual social situation has greatly changed since
his day there is no need to say. But in spite of these changes, in spite
of the abolition of legal serfdom, and the spread of democracy, with
the extension of science and of general education (in books, newspapers,
travel, and general intercourse as well as in schools), there remains
enough of a cleavage of society into a learned and an unlearned class,
a leisure and a laboring class, to make his point of view a most
enlightening one from which to criticize the separation between culture
and utility in present education. Behind the intellectual and abstract
distinction as it figures in pedagogical discussion, there looms a
social distinction between those whose pursuits involve a minimum of
self-directive thought and aesthetic appreciation, and those who are
concerned more directly with things of the intelligence and with the
control of the activities of others.
Aristotle was certainly permanently right when he said that "any
occupation or art or study deserves to be called mechanical if it
renders the body or soul or intellect of free persons unfit for the
exercise and practice of excellence." The force of the statement is
almost infinitely increased when we hold, as we nominally do at present,
that all persons, instead of a comparatively few, are free. For when the
mass of men and all women were regarded as unfree by the very nature
of their bodies and minds, there was neither intellectual confusion nor
moral hypocrisy in giving them only the training which fitted them
for mechanical skill, irrespective of its ulterior effect upon their
capacity to share in a worthy life. He was permanently right also when
he went on to say that "all mercenary employments as well as those which
degrade the condition of the body are mechanical, since they deprive
the intellect of leisure and dignity,"--permanently right, that is,
if gainful pursuits as matter of fact deprive the intellect of the
conditions of its exercise and so of its dignity. If his statements
are false, it is because they identify a phase of social custom with
a natural necessity. But a different view of the relations of mind and
matter, mind and body, intelligence and social service, is better than
Aristotle's conception only if it helps render the old idea obsolete
in fact--in the actual conduct of life and education. Aristotle was
permanently right in assuming the inferiority and subordination of
mere skill in performance and mere accumulation of external products to
understanding, sympathy of appreciation, and the free play of ideas. If
there was an error, it lay in assuming the necessary separation of the
two: in supposing that there is a natural divorce between efficiency in
producing commodities and rendering service, and self-directive thought;
between significant knowledge and practical achievement. We hardly
better matters if we just correct his theoretical misapprehension, and
tolerate the social state of affairs which generated and sanctioned
his conception. We lose rather than gain in change from serfdom to
free citizenship if the most prized result of the change is simply an
increase in the mechanical efficiency of the human tools of production.
So we lose rather than gain in coming to think of intelligence as an
organ of control of nature through action, if we are content that an
unintelligent, unfree state persists in those who engage directly in
turning nature to use, and leave the intelligence which controls to be
the exclusive possession of remote scientists and captains of industry.
We are in a position honestly to criticize the division of life into
separate functions and of society into separate classes only so far
as we are free from responsibility for perpetuating the educational
practices which train the many for pursuits involving mere skill in
production, and the few for a knowledge that is an ornament and a
cultural embellishment. In short, ability to transcend the Greek
philosophy of life and education is not secured by a mere shifting about
of the theoretical symbols meaning free, rational, and worthy. It is not
secured by a change of sentiment regarding the dignity of labor, and
the superiority of a life of service to that of an aloof self-sufficing
independence. Important as these theoretical and emotional changes
are, their importance consists in their being turned to account in the
development of a truly democratic society, a society in which all share
in useful service and all enjoy a worthy leisure. It is not a mere
change in the concepts of culture--or a liberal mind--and social service
which requires an educational reorganization; but the educational
transformation is needed to give full and explicit effect to the
changes implied in social life. The increased political and economic
emancipation of the "masses" has shown itself in education; it has
effected the development of a common school system of education, public
and free. It has destroyed the idea that learning is properly a monopoly
of the few who are predestined by nature to govern social affairs. But
the revolution is still incomplete. The idea still prevails that a truly
cultural or liberal education cannot have anything in common, directly
at least, with industrial affairs, and that the education which is fit
for the masses must be a useful or practical education in a sense which
opposes useful and practical to nurture of appreciation and liberation
of thought. As a consequence, our actual system is an inconsistent
mixture. Certain studies and methods are retained on the supposition
that they have the sanction of peculiar liberality, the chief content
of the term liberal being uselessness for practical ends. This aspect
is chiefly visible in what is termed the higher education--that of the
college and of preparation for it. But it has filtered through into
elementary education and largely controls its processes and aims. But,
on the other hand, certain concessions have been made to the masses
who must engage in getting a livelihood and to the increased role of
economic activities in modern life. These concessions are exhibited in
special schools and courses for the professions, for engineering, for
manual training and commerce, in vocational and prevocational courses;
and in the spirit in which certain elementary subjects, like the three
R's, are taught. The result is a system in which both "cultural" and
"utilitarian" subjects exist in an inorganic composite where the former
are not by dominant purpose socially serviceable and the latter not
liberative of imagination or thinking power.
In the inherited situation, there is a curious intermingling, in even
the same study, of concession to usefulness and a survival of traits
once exclusively attributed to preparation for leisure. The "utility"
element is found in the motives assigned for the study, the "liberal"
element in methods of teaching. The outcome of the mixture is perhaps
less satisfactory than if either principle were adhered to in its
purity. The motive popularly assigned for making the studies of the
first four or five years consist almost entirely of reading, spelling,
writing, and arithmetic, is, for example, that ability to read, write,
and figure accurately is indispensable to getting ahead. These studies
are treated as mere instruments for entering upon a gainful employment
or of later progress in the pursuit of learning, according as pupils do
not or do remain in school. This attitude is reflected in the emphasis
put upon drill and practice for the sake of gaining automatic skill.
If we turn to Greek schooling, we find that from the earliest years the
acquisition of skill was subordinated as much as possible to acquisition
of literary content possessed of aesthetic and moral significance. Not
getting a tool for subsequent use but present subject matter was the
emphasized thing. Nevertheless the isolation of these studies from
practical application, their reduction to purely symbolic devices,
represents a survival of the idea of a liberal training divorced from
utility. A thorough adoption of the idea of utility would have led to
instruction which tied up the studies to situations in which they
were directly needed and where they were rendered immediately and not
remotely helpful. It would be hard to find a subject in the curriculum
within which there are not found evil results of a compromise between
the two opposed ideals. Natural science is recommended on the ground
of its practical utility, but is taught as a special accomplishment in
removal from application. On the other hand, music and literature are
theoretically justified on the ground of their culture value and are
then taught with chief emphasis upon forming technical modes of skill.
If we had less compromise and resulting confusion, if we analyzed more
carefully the respective meanings of culture and utility, we might find
it easier to construct a course of study which should be useful and
liberal at the same time. Only superstition makes us believe that the
two are necessarily hostile so that a subject is illiberal because it
is useful and cultural because it is useless. It will generally be found
that instruction which, in aiming at utilitarian results, sacrifices the
development of imagination, the refining of taste and the deepening of
intellectual insight--surely cultural values--also in the same degree
renders what is learned limited in its use. Not that it makes it
wholly unavailable but that its applicability is restricted to routine
activities carried on under the supervision of others. Narrow modes of
skill cannot be made useful beyond themselves; any mode of skill which
is achieved with deepening of knowledge and perfecting of judgment is
readily put to use in new situations and is under personal control. It
was not the bare fact of social and economic utility which made certain
activities seem servile to the Greeks but the fact that the activities
directly connected with getting a livelihood were not, in their days,
the expression of a trained intelligence nor carried on because of a
personal appreciation of their meaning. So far as farming and the trades
were rule-of-thumb occupations and so far as they were engaged in for
results external to the minds of agricultural laborers and mechanics,
they were illiberal--but only so far. The intellectual and social
context has now changed. The elements in industry due to mere custom and
routine have become subordinate in most economic callings to elements
derived from scientific inquiry. The most important occupations of today
represent and depend upon applied mathematics, physics, and chemistry.
The area of the human world influenced by economic production
and influencing consumption has been so indefinitely widened that
geographical and political considerations of an almost infinitely wide
scope enter in. It was natural for Plato to deprecate the learning of
geometry and arithmetic for practical ends, because as matter of fact
the practical uses to which they were put were few, lacking in content
and mostly mercenary in quality. But as their social uses have increased
and enlarged, their liberalizing or "intellectual" value and their
practical value approach the same limit.
Doubtless the factor which chiefly prevents our full recognition and
employment of this identification is the conditions under which so much
work is still carried on. The invention of machines has extended the
amount of leisure which is possible even while one is at work. It is a
commonplace that the mastery of skill in the form of established habits
frees the mind for a higher order of thinking. Something of the same
kind is true of the introduction of mechanically automatic operations in
industry. They may release the mind for thought upon other topics. But
when we confine the education of those who work with their hands to a
few years of schooling devoted for the most part to acquiring the use of
rudimentary symbols at the expense of training in science, literature,
and history, we fail to prepare the minds of workers to take advantage
of this opportunity. More fundamental is the fact that the great
majority of workers have no insight into the social aims of their
pursuits and no direct personal interest in them. The results actually
achieved are not the ends of their actions, but only of their employers.
They do what they do, not freely and intelligently, but for the sake of
the wage earned. It is this fact which makes the action illiberal, and
which will make any education designed simply to give skill in such
undertakings illiberal and immoral. The activity is not free because not
freely participated in.
Nevertheless, there is already an opportunity for an education which,
keeping in mind the larger features of work, will reconcile liberal
nurture with training in social serviceableness, with ability to share
efficiently and happily in occupations which are productive. And such an
education will of itself tend to do away with the evils of the existing
economic situation. In the degree in which men have an active concern
in the ends that control their activity, their activity becomes free or
voluntary and loses its externally enforced and servile quality, even
though the physical aspect of behavior remain the same. In what is
termed politics, democratic social organization makes provision for this
direct participation in control: in the economic region, control remains
external and autocratic. Hence the split between inner mental action and
outer physical action of which the traditional distinction between the
liberal and the utilitarian is the reflex. An education which should
unify the disposition of the members of society would do much to unify
society itself.
Summary. Of the segregations of educational values discussed in the
last chapter, that between culture and utility is probably the most
fundamental. While the distinction is often thought to be intrinsic and
absolute, it is really historical and social. It originated, so far as
conscious formulation is concerned, in Greece, and was based upon the
fact that the truly human life was lived only by a few who subsisted
upon the results of the labor of others. This fact affected the
psychological doctrine of the relation of intelligence and desire,
theory and practice. It was embodied in a political theory of a
permanent division of human beings into those capable of a life of
reason and hence having their own ends, and those capable only of desire
and work, and needing to have their ends provided by others. The two
distinctions, psychological and political, translated into educational
terms, effected a division between a liberal education, having to do
with the self-sufficing life of leisure devoted to knowing for its
own sake, and a useful, practical training for mechanical occupations,
devoid of intellectual and aesthetic content. While the present
situation is radically diverse in theory and much changed in fact, the
factors of the older historic situation still persist sufficiently to
maintain the educational distinction, along with compromises which
often reduce the efficacy of the educational measures. The problem of
education in a democratic society is to do away with the dualism and
to construct a course of studies which makes thought a guide of
free practice for all and which makes leisure a reward of accepting
responsibility for service, rather than a state of exemption from it.
1 Aristotle does not hold that the class of actual slaves and of natural
slaves necessarily coincide.